John Irving

Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.

John Winslow Irving (born 2 March 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (for The Cider House Rules, based on his novel of the same name).

Quotes

A part of adolescence is feeling that there's no one else around you who's enough like yourself to understand you.

You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

• He wrote Helen that "a part of adolescence is feeling that there's no one else around you who's enough like yourself to understand you."
  • The World According to Garp (1978), ch. 5

• Imagination, he realized, came harder than memory.
  • The World According to Garp, ch. 5

• In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
  • The World According to Garp, ch. 19

• To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread, we were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.
  • The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), ch. 6

• You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
  • The Hotel New Hampshire, ch. 11

• Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual.
  • A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), ch. 9

• You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
  • A Widow for One Year (1998), part II, ch. 7

• Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
  • Until I Find You (2005), ch. 25, p. 493

Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (1988)

Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, Penguin, 1988, ISBN 0-140-10761-4

• Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either.

• Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.